Wednesday, July 25, 2012

We had dinner with some friends last night (she's an
excellent photographer and photoshopper) .They're moving to Florida at the end of the week and it was our last
time to get together.During the course
of dinner the subject of adding drama to a face came up and the fact that I routinely
"enhance" a person's face using Scott Kelby's Curves Adjustment Layer
"trick". I've been playing with it since hearing SK explain it
not too long ago.She asked if I would
let her in on Scott's secret.It wound
up too hard to explain just verbally, so I said I'd make today's post about
it.The easiest way I could come up to clearly
show what was going on was to "cartoon" it.

Figure 1 is the little cartoon I made up in Adobe Photoshop
CS6.I'm a photographer, not a sketch
artist, so don't laugh about my crude cartooning ability.Hey, it's got two eyes, a nose and a mouth
(sort of).Think of it as a model with
little to no makeup, flat lighting and a straight on shot.

Figure 2 shows the finished toning.If you take a look at any of the shots with
the Layer Panels showing you'll see that I copied both the shadows Layer and
the highlight Layer.In a real situation
you wouldn't duplicate the Adjustment Layers.I just had to do it so the highlighting and shading would be
visible.If you do it right (on a human)
you won't see the changes unless you turn on and off the visibility of the
Layer.So, don't freak out about the
copy Layers.It's just so you can see what
happened.

Figure 3 just proves that I did it in PSCS6.

Figures 4 through 7 is where the magic happens.In Figure 4 we're looking at the Properties
Panel for the Curves Adjustment Layer.You can see that the Curve has been brought up very high in the
highlights area.This will give the
overall image a really blown out look.The Layer Mask is then Inverted (CTRL I [eye]) making it black and
getting us back to a normal look to the image.The "trick" is to use a small (5 or 6 pixel), hard (I was at
96%) brush and draw lines where ever the highlight needs to be emphasized. In this case I went under the mouth, along
the centerline of the nose, the cleft of the chin and above the eyes.Since this is an Adjustment Layer of the
original image you'll see variations based on the lightness of the shot.I parts of the shot that are bright already
the lines will look pretty faint.In the
highlights of darker areas of the image the lines will be pretty
pronounced.Because you're taking the
cues from the images itself everything will match up well.

Figure 5 is just the opposite.The Curve is pulled way down giving deep
tones.The same principle applies.Anywhere you need to emphasize a shadow, put
a line on it.

Now here's "the secret".Feather the Mask.In CS6 you have a Properties Panel for every (I
think it's every one of them) Adjustment Layer.You can control either what you're adjusting and its Mask.Click on the Mask icon and you have sliders
for Density and Feathering.Keeping an
eye on your image, slide the Feather Slider until those lines are blurred
enough so they become either shading or highlights.

A few of the recent posts here have used this
technique.You can see it used in the post of the girl blowing bubbles, where it was used to define her chin and her cheekbone. Others were in the 6/25 post and the 6/27 post putting emphasis on the uniforms

About the Kayview Gallery

Honored to be featured on:

.

Interesting Blog or Site of the Day

Subscribe To

Prints Available

If you're looking through the blog and you see a shot that catches your fancy, it's probably for sale as a limited addition, signed and numbered print.

All prints are large format, starting at 16 x 20 and going up. Leave a note with your email address and we can discuss which prints are available, which are sold out and those that will never be available.